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> But central authorities are also now worried about any regional languages (which it insists on calling dialects) among the Han majority It's not as clear cut

> But central authorities are also now worried about any regional languages (which it insists on calling dialects) among the Han majority It's not as clear cut that variations of Chinese are languages and not dialects as the economist makes it out. This is very similar to arabic. Wikipedia for instance also calls them dialects. This is very different from Uighur and Tibetan which are pretty clear cut separate languages, but which are intermingled here in this article.

jacobolus 10y ago
Wikipedia calls them “varieties” because to call them “languages” would result in a giant political flamewar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese That doesn’t mean they aren’t distinct languages (and not mere “dialects”) by any definition a modern linguist would typically use. Calling them “dialects” would be similar to calling English, German, and Dutch “dialects” of “Germanic”.
- talideon 10y ago
  A better, more neutral term would be 'topolect'. It's a better translation of the term 'fāngyán' (which is typically translated as 'dialect'), and blurs the line between the English terms 'dialect' and 'language'.
- legulere 10y ago
  English is pretty far from continental western germanic (German, Dutch, ...). Continental western germanic is actually a good example of a group where the distinction between dialect and language is not clear. There's a dialect continuum in the area [1], so you often can't draw clear cut lines what belongs to one language and one to another. - With Low German the question is wether it is an own language or just a dialect of German. - With the three frisian varieties the question is wether they are different languages or just different dialects of Frisian. - Luxemburgish can be considered just a dialect, like the German dialects spoken just behind the border that are essentially the same, or an own language. - Dutch belongs to a dialect group that also spans over wide parts of Germany and Luxembourg [2] - And there are many more things to think about like Afrikaans or Yiddish [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_West_Germanic_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages
guard-of-terra 10y ago
"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" To me, any non-mutually-intelligible dialect is in position to be called a language.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > To me, any non-mutually-intelligible dialect is in position to be called a language. The problem is that there is often a continuum of dialects where dialects that are near each other in this continuum are mutually intelligible, but those that are further apart are not. Where do you set the boundary between languages and dialects there. P.S.: I'm not a linguist but because of this fact I would consider to define languages and dialects in a quite different way (the following concepts and description is my personal invention and not taken from some linguistics literature). First we define the concept "speak-kind" as a generalization of language, dialect etc. (we use this word so that we aren't burdened by the fact that generally a dialect is defined to be some variety of a language etc.). Now consider the graph where the vertices are the "speak-kind"s. This graph has an edge if two "speak-kind"s are mutually intelligible. Now we can define the concept of the "cont[inuum]-language": a "cont-language" is defined to be a connected component in this graph. In this sense Bavarian and Dutch would be of the same "cont-language" (exercise: How would the connecting path in the graph probably look like?), though probably not mutually intelligible, but Hungarian and English would belong to a different "cont-language".
  - panglott 10y ago
    Conversely, the opposite happens as well, where people have higher mutual intelligibility of different language families than other dialects within their own language. I've heard of this in places like India, where "Hindi" is a standard language of a massive dialect chain that is spoken next to various Dravidian languages. A Hindi speaker might be better able to understand a Dravidian speaker from the same city than a Hindi speaker from a distant city.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    I believe it's no longer so these days when >3/4 of people live in cities. Cities tend to normalize and homogenize languages. So you will ask: "Is the language spoken in city X is a dialect of a language in a city Y? Is it mutually intelligible?" The answer is often "no" or "not really". It's no longer a continuum rather a graph.

jacobolus 10y ago

Wikipedia calls them “varieties” because to call them “languages” would result in a giant political flamewar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Chinese, also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Varieties_of_Chinese That doesn’t mean they aren’t distinct languages (and not mere “dialects”) by any definition a modern linguist would typically use. Calling them “dialects” would be similar to calling English, German, and Dutch “dialects” of “Germanic”.

talideon 10y ago
A better, more neutral term would be 'topolect'. It's a better translation of the term 'fāngyán' (which is typically translated as 'dialect'), and blurs the line between the English terms 'dialect' and 'language'.
legulere 10y ago
English is pretty far from continental western germanic (German, Dutch, ...). Continental western germanic is actually a good example of a group where the distinction between dialect and language is not clear. There's a dialect continuum in the area [1], so you often can't draw clear cut lines what belongs to one language and one to another. - With Low German the question is wether it is an own language or just a dialect of German. - With the three frisian varieties the question is wether they are different languages or just different dialects of Frisian. - Luxemburgish can be considered just a dialect, like the German dialects spoken just behind the border that are essentially the same, or an own language. - Dutch belongs to a dialect group that also spans over wide parts of Germany and Luxembourg [2] - And there are many more things to think about like Afrikaans or Yiddish [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_West_Germanic_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum#Continental_... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages

guard-of-terra 10y ago

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" To me, any non-mutually-intelligible dialect is in position to be called a language.

wolfgke 10y ago
> To me, any non-mutually-intelligible dialect is in position to be called a language. The problem is that there is often a continuum of dialects where dialects that are near each other in this continuum are mutually intelligible, but those that are further apart are not. Where do you set the boundary between languages and dialects there. P.S.: I'm not a linguist but because of this fact I would consider to define languages and dialects in a quite different way (the following concepts and description is my personal invention and not taken from some linguistics literature). First we define the concept "speak-kind" as a generalization of language, dialect etc. (we use this word so that we aren't burdened by the fact that generally a dialect is defined to be some variety of a language etc.). Now consider the graph where the vertices are the "speak-kind"s. This graph has an edge if two "speak-kind"s are mutually intelligible. Now we can define the concept of the "cont[inuum]-language": a "cont-language" is defined to be a connected component in this graph. In this sense Bavarian and Dutch would be of the same "cont-language" (exercise: How would the connecting path in the graph probably look like?), though probably not mutually intelligible, but Hungarian and English would belong to a different "cont-language".
- panglott 10y ago
  Conversely, the opposite happens as well, where people have higher mutual intelligibility of different language families than other dialects within their own language. I've heard of this in places like India, where "Hindi" is a standard language of a massive dialect chain that is spoken next to various Dravidian languages. A Hindi speaker might be better able to understand a Dravidian speaker from the same city than a Hindi speaker from a distant city.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  I believe it's no longer so these days when >3/4 of people live in cities. Cities tend to normalize and homogenize languages. So you will ask: "Is the language spoken in city X is a dialect of a language in a city Y? Is it mutually intelligible?" The answer is often "no" or "not really". It's no longer a continuum rather a graph.